The first finalists of Polar Bear Pitching 2017 are here!

The first patch of finalists of the annual Finnish ice hole pitching competition Polar Bear Pitching have been announced. The competition is held in Oulu, Northern Finland on 14-15th of February, 2017, and it gathers hundreds of participants from all around the world to witness this arctic experience. This year we received startup applications from 16 countries. The pre-chosen finalists are registered in 8 different countries.

The first finalists of Polar Bear Pitching 2017 are:

Sensotrend, Finland: Sensotrend eases the self care of diabetics by gathering all the information affecting the treatment into one user interface, where you can observe it interactively and from where it can be shared with a nurse or a doctor.

TryMeDo, Russian Federation: TryMeDo is a platform that brings together people who have one thing in common - the desire to discover, create, and perform challenges.

Teach Me Now, United Arabic Emirates: Teach Me Now provides a virtual classroom for teachers and students looking to enrich their academic experience. With our interactive tools and resources, all you have to do is create your profile and connect with the tutor of your choice.

Intellyo, Hungary: Intellyo is an intelligent platform to systematically acquire customers at industrial scale. It analyses markets and then orchestrates the creation and distribution of hyper targeted content at a massive scale and speed on own and proprietary social platforms to reach the target customers.

First Bond, Denmark: Fibo is a wearable smart bracelet for parents to be, who do not want to miss the actions and development of their future child. The baby's actions are monitored and shared through an elegant looking bracelet imitating the movements, kicking and hiccups.

Proximi.io, Finland: Prooximi.io is a unified software development kit and application programming interface to all mobile positioning technologies. With the platform you'll kick-start location-aware app development in minutes.

Virta, Finland: Virta offers loading services for electric cars in the most comprehensive web in Finland.

Ultimate.ai, Finland: Ultimate.ai builds artificial intelligence that understands and speaks Finnish. It is meant for companies, and it is powered by deep learning.

The finalists were chosen based on the applications. In addition to now announced finalists, the best ones from the Dark Bear Semifinals will get into the finals, too. The semifinals are held on February 14th, the day before the finals, in Oulu.

The finals will be judged by Finnish as well as international investors. We have big names like Eeswan Navaratnam from 01 Ventures, Henry Ines from Draper Dragon, Jonathan Hirshon from Horizon Communications, and startup guru Shraga Katz in the jury. Polar Bear Pitching Finals will be live streamed from Oulu Market Square on February 15th at 6-8pm (UTC+2), so it can be seen all around the world.

About the publisher

Polar Bear Pitching is a non-profit organization (NPO) from Oulu, Finland. Its mission is to help startups to succeed and break down the barriers that block development and growth. The Polar Bear Pitching event is organized in co-operation with the University of Oulu, the city of Oulu, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Business Kitchen, and other organizations, entrepreneurs and volunteers of the community.